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Office of Arts & Culture news and events

Seattle Parks and Recreation publishes your guide to summer fun in Seattle Parks

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Put the Art in Parks, events and art installations now through September 

 *Scheduling updates:

– The Othello Quartz Festival, new date: Sunday, July 17, 1-7 p.m.
– The African Village Experience, new date: Monday, July 25 through Friday July 29, daily from 5 to 8 p.m.
– The Delridge Community Center Park’s “Day of Dance 2016,”new date: Sunday, August 14 from noon to 6:30 p.m.
– The Teen Concert @ Jimi Hendrix Park new location: Sam Smith Park
– There will not be a performance of Blood Wedding in Duwamish Waterway Park on Sunday, August 28.
– Unfurled, a public art installation in Lake City Mini Park, will be on display October through November.

 

put-artsThe Put the Arts in Parks 2016 brochure is now available and includes an exciting summer of events funded by the program in its pilot year. Made possible by the Seattle Park District, the Put the Arts in Parks program is a partnership between the Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle Parks and Recreation seeking to enliven Seattle parks by promoting arts and culture, celebrating diversity, building community connections, and energizing parks while connecting with underserved communities. “Seattle has wonderful and distinctive art throughout our parks, and this exciting initiative will build on that,” said Jesús Aguirre, Superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Put the Arts in Parks is funding 39 events, series, and art installations through September 2016, providing $199,400 in support to community-based organizations and artists. The brochure is a comprehensive guide to all funded projects, including community festivals, dance and art workshops, music concerts, and more. Copies of the brochure will be available at all community centers, Teen Life Centers, Neighborhood Service Centers, and public libraries within two weeks. All events are free and open to the public.

News Release: Two Seattle Public Art Projects Receive National Recognition

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Two public art projects of the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS) received national recognition from Americans for the Arts Public Art Network’s 2016 Year in Review. Year in Review highlights the most successful, innovative, and exciting public art projects and programs in the United States. The two award-winning projects are Public Art Boot Camp, a training program for emerging public artists; and ALL RISE, an 18 month-long temporary art program.

“Being recognized nationally for our innovative programming and temporary art is exciting and it expands the boundaries of what we think of as public art,” says Ruri Yampolsky, Public Art Program Director. “Among our other work, we create programs that nurture emerging artists and address the barriers to entry in our field.”

This year the Public Art Network received 260 applications from public art programs and artists. A total of 38 projects were selected for recognition. ARTS has received recognition for previous projects in past years.

“These Public Art Network Year in Review selections illustrate that public art has the power to enhance our lives on a scale that little else can. Whether subtly beautiful or vibrantly jolting, a public art work has the singular ability to make citizens going about everyday business stop, think, and through the power of art appreciate a moment, no matter how brief,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “I congratulate the artists and commissioning groups for these community treasures, and I look forward to honoring more great works in the years to come.”

bootcampemailPublic Art Boot Camp is a hands-on training program intended to expand the next generation of public artists, including emerging artists and artists from historically under-represented communities such as communities of color. In the inaugural year of Public Art Boot Camp, participants engaged in a free two-day intensive basic training, learning to translate their studio or gallery experience into the public realm. Through a competitive process, 30 artists were selected to participate. They attended workshops that provided an overview of the field with topics such as finding opportunities, selection processes, contracts, working with design professionals, approvals, fabrication, installation and more. Participants were included in an invitational opportunity to create temporary artworks for “Art Interruptions: Central Area Neighborhood Greenway” and “Seattle Center Sculpture Walk.” Following the Boot Camp, 14 of the 30 participating artists received their first public project commissions through ARTS or other organizations.

Montgomery_StarsALL RISE, a collaborative art series curated by Meagan Atiyeh and Elizabeth Spavento, featured a year and a half of performances, events and temporary art installations organized for and presented at an entire vacant city block at the location of Seattle City Light’s future Denny Substation in the Cascade neighborhood. The curators were commissioned to engage and transform the entire 90,000 sq. Ft. empty lot into a dynamic and evolving art exhibition space from May 2014 through September 2015. ALL RISE encompassed more than 50 artists who engaged with the residents and workers of the Cascade neighborhood, exploring the transient potentials of land as residential, agricultural, urban, and political. Artists from Seattle to London, ranging in disciplines from sculptors, photographers, choreographers, dancers, composers, musicians, poets and community activists, created work for and around the site. Full documentation can be found at www.allriseseattle.org.

The Public Art Network (PAN), a program of Americans for the Arts, is designed to provide services to the diverse field of public art and to develop strategies and tools to improve communities through public art. The network’s constituents are public art professionals, visual artists, design professionals, and communities and organizations planning public art projects and programs.

The Year in Review selections were presented at the national conference “The Present & Presence of Public Art” in Boston, MA in June. The 38 public art works selected for the PAN Year in Review can be seen on this page. The presentation, which includes photos and descriptions of these works, are available for purchase through Americans for the Arts’ store.

Americans for the Arts is the leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts in America. With offices in Washington, DC and New York City, it has a record of more than 40 years of service. Americans for the Arts is dedicated to representing and serving local communities and creating opportunities for every American to participate in, and appreciate all forms of the Arts. Additional information is available at www.AmericansForTheArts.org.

Images: Public art boot camp and Robert Montgomery.

University Bridge in a whole new light: artists Ian Campbell and Hayley Buckbee selected for lighting artist residency

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Ian Campbell and Hayley Buckbee, two members of RSVR an art and design studio, have been selected for the University Bridge Lighting artist residency. The Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS), in partnership with Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) commissioned Campbell and Buckbee to create a lighting concept and undertake an in-depth exploration of Seattle’s three historic draw bridges: the University, Fremont, and Ballard bridges, which will celebrate their 100th anniversary in 2017.

U Bridge_Ian Campbell & Hayley Buckbee_Golden HourThe Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS), in partnership with Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) commissioned Campbell and Buckbee to undertake an in-depth exploration of Seattle’s three historic draw bridges: the University, Fremont, and Ballard bridges, which will celebrate their 100th anniversary in 2017, and to create a lighting concept that celebrates these iconic structures.

The University Bridge is a double-leaf draw bridge, known as a bascule bridge, built in 1919 with an opening span of 217 feet. The bridge was remodeled in 1933 and was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. A bridge operator is on site every day in the northwestern tower, the southeastern tower is unoccupied and will be used for the residency. It will be furnished with a desk, chair, overhead lights, and windows.

At RSVR, Campbell and Buckbee focus on merging architecture, art, and industrial design. Their work is informed by the exploration of light, the process of making, and the formation of memories. Campbell has a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Arkansas. Buckbee has a Master of Architecture from the University of Washington.

Commissioned with Seattle Department of Transportation 1 % for Art funds.

Image courtesy of Ian Campbell and Hayley Buckbee

Martha Rosler at Friends of the Waterfront

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The Source: Art
Thursday, May 12, 2016, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Waterfront Space, 1400 Western Avenue – Free and open to the public
RSVP

The City of Seattle will re-present Martha Rosler’s Seattle: Hidden Histories (1991), a set of one-minute TV public service announcements made in collaboration with local indigenous residents, including historians, linguists, and leaders. Martha Rosler has recently been awarded the The New Foundation Seattle’s inaugural 100K Prize, a biennial award presented to an influential, U.S.-based woman artist in honor of her exemplary artistic achievements and enduring commitment to her practice. 

Throughout the spring, Friends of Waterfront Seattle hosts The Source series, a sequence of community open house events celebrating our waterfront as a source of heritage, creative inspiration, and appreciation for the natural world. This series also celebrates Waterfront Space, the project showroom for Waterfront Seattle, a source for project information and community engagement.

All evening events will include food, beer and wine, and a brief program presenting new perspectives on our waterfront’s history, ecology and art.

In memoriam, Rick Bartow

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Bartow SPU00.176The Northwest lost a great artist with the passing of Native American Artist Rick Bartow on April 2, 2016 at 69 years old. This Oregon artist was known for his transformational artwork: animal spirits and human spirits blended together in a cacophonous display of color and culture. His artwork is vivid and gripping and commands the viewers’ attention. We are very fortunate to have his work in the city’s Portable Works Collection.

Bartow lived and worked on the Oregon coast, where he observed hawk, raven and eagle—the subjects that populate his artwork. Rick was a member of the Wiyot tribe from Northwestern California. In 1969, Rick Bartow earned a Bachelors of Arts in Art Education from Western Oregon State University. He served in the Vietnam War and worked in many fields including fishing, bartending, building maintenance, and teaching. He also became an active blues guitarist before his death.

Bartow was a professional artist, with solo exhibitions at museums, universities, and galleries around the globe and the USA. In 2003 he inaugurated the Continuum 12 series at the National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan. In 2002 the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University organized the traveling exhibit My Eye, that traveled to the University of Notre Dame and the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane, WA. Some of his prominent group exhibitions include Twentieth Century American Sculpture at the White House, Washington, D.C., organized by the Heard Museum; Indian Reality Today, at Westfaliches Landesmuseum fur Naturkunde, Munster, Germany; Head, Heart and Hands, organized by the Kentucky Art and Craft Gallery in Louisville, KY and traveling to the American Craft Museum, New York, NY; Indian Time at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, NM; and the Museum of Art & Design’s Changing Hands 2: Art Without Reservation, New York, NY

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m., Saturday, April 30, at the Newport Performing Arts Center.

Rick Bartow
Observant, 1999
Acrylic on panel
24” x 24”
Photo courtesy of the Charles Froelick Gallery

 

New artwork in West Seattle

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Delridge CompleteThe recently installed artwork, Fitting by Rebecca Cummins on SW Barton Street, features two camera obscuras perched at the top of the stairs that lead down to Henderson Street in West Seattle. The “cameras” are converted water gate valves that provide inverted, panoramic 350° views of the area, which includes the Delridge Combined Sewer Overflow Tank (CSO 169) site. Installed above the recently retrofitted CSO Tank 169, Fitting illuminates the important infrastructure work that CSO Tank 169 represents and the waterway it protects, Longfellow Creek.

A camera obscura is an optical device that led to the development of photography and the photographic camera. Through the lens of the cameras, vehicles and pedestrians will appear upside down and moving in the opposite direction. Cummins installed the cameras at two different heights for accessibility; a taller one to allow for adults and a shorter one for disabled persons or children.

The two camera obscuras are fabricated from valves and pipes that are typically used by Seattle Public Utilities for drainage and wastewater; Seattle Public Utilities constructs combined sewer overflows for the city. Large gate valves create the light-tight chambers and steel pipes form the structural mounts. An acrylic lens on one side of the valve cameras invert views of the surrounding environment and project them onto a frosted acrylic screen midway in the chamber. A viewing aperture directly opposite the lens allows the audience to peer in and observe the moving, colorful image that is projected upside down on the screen.

About Rebecca Cummins

Artist Rebecca Cummins explores the sculptural, experiential and sometimes humorous possibilities of light and natural phenomena, often referencing the history of optics in her installations that have included a machine for making rainbows, a photographic rifle, paranoid dinner-table devices and a variety of sculptural and photographic approaches to marking time. Other projects record the movement of shadows in daylight and moonlight over regular time intervals. She is currently working on commissions for the Washington State Arts Commission (ArtsWA) and the Exploratorium in San Francisco.  She has exhibited widely in Australia, the U.S., and Europe; exhibitions include the Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai, China; the South Australia Biennale of Australian Art, the Biennial of Seville, Seville, Spain and Wireless Experience, Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA in Helsinki, Finland.

Commissioned with Seattle Public Utilities 1 % for Art funds.

ARTS Presents: Lunch + Learn

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Celebrating Black History Month

Friday, February 19 | 12-1 p.m.
Bertha Knight Landes Room at City Hall
600 4th Ave, Seattle, WA 98104

Please join us for a special Lunch + Learn, celebrating Black History Month. Artists Barbara Earl Thomas, Aramis Hamer and C. Davida Ingram will present their work and Ingram will moderate a conversation about how their artwork reflects their cultural heritage. Curated by Ruri Yampolsky, Public Art Program Director, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.

Please bring your lunch; beverages and food for thought will be provided.

Please RSVP here by Tuesday, February 16, 2016.

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Celebrating Black History Month in Seattle

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February marks the beginning of Black History Month, but residents of Seattle are able to celebrate and learn about the rich cultural history of Blacks and African-Americans all year long. In honor of Black History Month we have compiled a few events to mark on your calendar in February and throughout the year.

Northwest African American Museum
Black Quarterly – Gentrification
February 4, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
Free
The Black Quarterly brings people together to break bread and delve deeper into a world of topics. February’s conversation topic: Changing Neighborhoods, Displacement, Personal & Cultural Ownership of Community.  Hosted by Inye Wokoma.

With the fluidity of a dinner table conversation, the Black Quarterly takes socially pertinent topics and creates a space for deeper and honest discussion about the dreams and challenges we face as a society. While the table is set for a limited number of guests, the goal is for the fruits of the conversation to ripple into the community as participants learn from each other’s diverse perspectives. The conversation, whenever possible, will also extend directly into the greater community through social media. 

Dialogues in Art: Exhibitions on Racial Injustice
Sign of the Times
Seattle Presents Gallery opening
Thursday, February 4, 4 – 5:30 p.m.
Free
In Sign of The Times Johnson reveals statistics and data that counter the negative media representations of African-Americans. The exhibition will feature artistic representations of data that illustrate the increase of graduation rates of African-Americans from the 60’s; and the increase of marriage in straight and LGBTQ Black homes. Sign of the Times not only demonstrates the power of data and how it is shared but pairs with Black History Month by having a black artist actively re-write history.

Dialogues in Art: Exhibitions on Racial Injustice is a yearlong series of exhibitions that explore artists’ and curators’ interpretations of racial injustice and systemic racism impacting Black and African-American people throughout America. 

Museum of History and Industry
Black History Month Celebration
Saturday, February 13, 11 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
$7
Get immersed in Seattle Hip-Hop culture and history through special film screenings, performances, and photography. Participate in a community panel discussion continuing the Town Hall Seattle conversation on the role of Black Lives Matter and the civil rights movement in Hip-Hop.

ARTS Presents: Lunch + Learn
Celebrating Black History Month
Friday, February 19, 12 – 1 p.m.
Bertha Knight Landes Room at City Hall
600 4th Ave, Seattle, WA 98104
Free
Please join us for a special Lunch + Learn, celebrating Black History Month. Artists Barbara Earl Thomas, Aramis Hamer and C. Davida Ingram will present their work and Ingram will moderate a conversation about how their artwork reflects their cultural heritage. Please bring your lunch; beverages and food for thought will be provided.

STG Presents: Silent Movie Mondays: Silent Treasures Series
Lime Kiln Club Field Day
The Paramount Theatre
Monday, February 22, 7 p.m.
$10
Discovered in the vault of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 100 years after it was filmed, Lime Kiln Club Field Day offers a glimpse of the earliest known surviving feature film with a cast of black actors. A compilation of unedited daily rushes – multiple “takes” shot each day during production – this assemblage is a mixture of narrative scenes and candid shots of the black cast and white crew interacting on set, as well as documentary footage of the interracial cast and crew. Filmed in September of 1913 and starring legendary musical theater performer Bert Williams, the film uses minstrel stereotypes and contemporary performance styles to create a comedy centered around Williams’s character, a black social club, and his attempt to win the heart of the local beauty. There will be a pre-show presentation by MoMA’s Associate Curator of Film Ron Magliozzi, as well as a Cakewalk performance from Spectrum Dance Theater before the screening, which will also include the Bert Williams short film A Natural Born Gambler. Tacoma native Tedde Gibson will accompany on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, and a CineClub discussion will follow.

INTERGENERATIONAL DIALOGUE ON THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT: THEN & NOW
Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute
104 17th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144
Tuesday, February 23, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
Free

The Seattle King County NAACP is pleased to offer this free event in celebration of Black History Month! Five local leaders and activists of varying ages will join us for a panel discussion on the history of the civil rights movement and current efforts to advance racial equity. The event will also include performances by local youth, and small group discussions on how to effectively build an intergenerational movement. RSVP to communications@seattlekingcountynaacp.org

Northwest African American Museum
Complex Exchange – Tradition & Innovation
Wednesday, February 24, 7 – 9 p.m.
Free
RANDERSON ROMUALDO CORDEIRO, 2008, KEHINDE WILEY
A Program Partnership with Seattle Art Museum
Complex Exchange pairs Seattle community members from varying disciplines in a series of conversations related to issues of race, power, and politics of representation.

Artists, technologists, activists, writers, and community builders tackle themes inspired by the exhibitions Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic—on view at the Seattle Art Museum, and The Harmon and Harriet Kelly Collection of African American Art: Works on Paper—on view at NAAM.

EMP Museum
Through the Eyes of Art
Sky Church at EMP Museum
Friday, February 26, 7 – 11 p.m.
$15 ($10 EMP members) All ages.
Presented by EMP Museum and Brandkings, Through the Eyes of Art is the city’s premier Black History Month celebration. Now in its third year, the event will take an artistic look at the topic of Black Love featuring live performances from Draze and others, presentation of the Servant of the People Award honoring gospel singer Pat Wright and Gregg Alex (Matt Talbot Center), and an art show from some of Seattle’s top painters and photographers. Visit Black History Month at EMP to learn about other events.

2016 Black Music Summit
Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute
104 17th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144
UPDATE: moved to March
The 2016 Black Music Summit will bring together music stakeholders including musicians, artists, technologists, promoters, venues, media, educators, community organizers and others to discuss the music industry, innovation and future of Black music in the Central Area, Seattle and beyond.  The theme of the event will be innovation and explore the future of Black music at the intersection of art, technology and business. Tickets are available at http://blackmusicsummit.com/

Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic
Seattle Art Museum
Thru May 8, 2016
Adults $19.95; SAM Members and child 18 and under – Free
Kehinde Wiley is one of the leading American artists to emerge in the last decade and he has been ingeniously reworking the grand portraiture traditions. Since ancient times the portrait has been tied to the representation of power, and in European courts and churches, artists and their patrons developed a complex repository of postures and poses and refined a symbolic language. This language, woven into all aspects of a portrait, described the sitter’s influence and power, virtue and character, or profession. In his consideration of portrait traditions, Wiley has been especially drawn to the grand aristocratic portraits of the 18th century.

Celebrate Black culture anytime:

STG Presents: Re:definition Gallery, Curated by Jonathan Moore & Tariqa Waters, Featuring works by Ari Glass & Aramis Hamer
The Paramount Theatre
911 Pine Street
Seattle, WA 98101
Re:definition aims to redefine historic cultural space in the form of an art gallery for local visual artists, with rotating exhibits occurring throughout the year. Current exhibit on display through May 31, 2016.

As a society, we prescribe definitions to our spaces and faces, in an effort to put the world around us into context. Via participation with a significant number of arts managers in our area, Seattle Theatre Group has gained an increased sensitivity to how definitions can be limiting, outdated and in many cases, hurtful. To expand the conversation on the importance of space and how it can be illuminating, STG will be showcasing three visual art exhibits featuring Black artists and their work.

Spectrum Dance Theater
2015\16 Season #RACEish
An exploration of America’s 240 years of (failed) race relations. #RACEish is a series of productions that boldly disrupt the current conversation around race – a conversation that has become tinny, familiar, insular, limited, narrowed by political correctness, self-censored, afraid to offend and peopled by people that think alike.

Intiman Theater Summer Festival
July 2016
Award-winning director and University of Washington School of Drama professor Valerie Curtis-Newton will serve as co-curator of the 2016 Intiman Theatre Festival, which will be devoted to great American playwrights who are also inter-generational black female writers.

Upcoming Installation by artist Jean Shin

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The artwork RECLAIMED by artist Jean Shin is close to being installed permanently at the North Transfer Station, located at 1350 North 34th Street in Seattle, WA. Shin worked with the design team to develop a permanent artwork that will be integrated at Seattle Public Utilities’ new facility.

overviewIMG_2041RECLAIMED references the topography of the site before 1966 when the North Transfer Station was built, and brings the memory of the former landscape to the new Transfer Station plaza. The artwork transforms nearly 10,000 linear feet of recycled rebar salvaged from the site during demolition. The sculpture will be finished with a bright orange painted surface and will create three lyrical, lacelike sculptures that weave together a topographical memory of the site and cut landmasses.

 

 

 

artformIMG_2045Enlivening the new plaza, the sculptures’ placement and the pathways that are created between them provide active spaces for public engagement. These inviting paths, delineated by bright orange painted lines on the pavement, connect 34th Street to the entrance of the building.  Another path between the two tallest sculptures leads to the landscape area, framing an intimate view of the garden.

Together, these sculptures made out of new and repurposed rebar from the site, partnered with the installation of colored lines on the pavement, suggest a close relationship of art, industry, and nature coexisting in the same location. As visitors walk through the plaza, the public is invited to consider the significance of place, its impact on materials and their connection to the environment both past and present. RECLAIMED highlights the potential of waste material to be reimagined into an elegant second life within the community, and echoes the sustainable principle of re-use at the Transfer Station.”

longviewIMG_2054The North Transfer Station is located near the dividing line between the neighborhoods of Fremont and Wallingford in a residential area close to businesses, as well as the Burke Gilman Trail. For more information about the project, visit the project website at www.seattle.gov/util/NewNorth.

About Jean Shin

New York City artist Jean Shin creates elaborate sculptures and site-specific installation using accumulated cast-off materials. Her installations have been widely exhibited in museums and cultural institutions abroad and in the U.S., including the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona; Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia; and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. She has been commissioned for permanent works by the U.S. General Services Administration Art in Architecture Award, New York City Percent for Art and Metropolitan Transportation Authority Art for Transit programs. She has received numerous awards, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Architecture/Environmental Structures and Sculpture, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Art Award. She is represented by Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York.

This artwork is commissioned with Seattle Public Utilities’ 1% for Art funds.

Images courtesy Fabrication Specialties Limited 

New poetry and art at Seattle Center

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Seattle Center is expanding their investments in temporary
artworks with the new Poetry Garden Art Series

Four artists have been commissioned to create temporary interventions in the Seattle Center Poetry Garden to call attention to the unique character of the site, a space designed to ask visual artists to draw inspiration from the written word.

The Office of ASCpoetrygarden72d75b3fb2fdb0dcb1b6a9bc68c486afrts & Culture and the Seattle Center have a 40 year history of partnering to bring permanent and temporary artworks to the Seattle Center campus. In 2015, the two organizations jointly invested in emerging artists by providing training and commissioning seven artists to create site specific temporary artwork for the campus. The 2016 Poetry Garden Art Series is a continuation of this investment.

The Poetry Garden was envisioned at its inception to be a site for temporary art activations. The garden, in the heart of the Seattle Center campus, is composed of crushed granite paths punctuated by 12 sculpted, polished, pink granite boulders engraved with an eclectic selection of poems by various authors. The boulders were sculpted and sited by artist/sculptor John Hoge.

Artists Elizabeth Gahan, Naoko Morisawa, Natalie Ball and Tara Tamaribuchi were selected to create temporary artworks in the garden. ARTS has also formed a partnership with Porchlit to have readings in the garden to complement each installation.

Schedule:

Elizabeth Gahan February 1 – May 1, 2016

Elizabeth Gahan has built a practice of creating dynamic forms from recycled materials. With her installation in the Poetry Garden she will create an array of bright flowers all made from reused and recycled materials.

Gahan is a Seattle-based artist. She received a dual undergraduate degree in Global Studies and Fine Art from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master’s degree in Fine Art from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA with an emphasis in painting. Gahan then attended a residency program at the Banff Centre, Canada to pursue installation art. Her current art practice combines 2D studio art and 3D installation art. Gahan currently works from a space at Equinox Studios in Georgetown, Seattle.

Naoko Morisawa May 9 – August 1, 2016

Naoko Morisawa will create a pattern of Morse code made of colorful garden hose tubing. She is transforming a functional garden material into an art object by amplifying the form and color of the garden hose.

Morisawa received a BA in Design from Tama Art University, Tokyo. Her (Seattle) artwork is made of hundreds of very small slices of natural/oil-dyed woodchips on board. The variety of wood grain and the pattern is never the same. The combination of natural grains creates interesting shadows and impressions. When seen from a distance, her artwork looks like a painting, and the details of the work slowly emerge when the viewer comes closer. Bright, fun, and unusual subjects attract and inspire her to work in new directions. Mysterious creatures and illusions are recurring themes.

Natalie Ball August 8 – October 31, 2016

Installation artist Natalie Ball will use the garden as a space to hang a large-scale textile artwork of doll houses that explores indigenous domesticity. The artwork will mix the tradition of storytelling through fiber arts to take a hard look at the conditions and experience of indigenous women.

Ball was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies from the University of Oregon and she furthered her education in New Zealand at Massey University where she attained her Master’s degree in Maori Visual Arts. Ball is an indigenous artist who examines internal and external discourses that shape Indian identity through contemporary art.

Tara Tamaribuchi November 6, 2016 – January 31, 2017

Tara Tamaribuchi will respond to the panoramic landscape of the Poetry Garden through the lens of 16th Century Japanese screen paintings, by featuring cloud forms made of gold buttons that frame the foliage of the area.

Tamaribuchi received a BA in Journalism from George Washington University, Washington, DC and a BFA in Painting from Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR. Tamaribuchi’s work today is driven by the desire to revel in the early development of her young child and her hand, to understand it and try to feel that raw creativity. She also investigates the children’s art and craft supplies that litter her home. Tamaribuchi’s work in the past has focused on traditional Japanese patterns and motifs to find a connection to her ancestors. She continues to employ this connection with the study of her daughter’s drawings, to link her hands with the hands of her ancestors.

Porchlit

Porchlit is a project by Yonnas Getahun, Campbell Thibo and Omar Willey. Getahum, Thibo and Willey have uploaded recordings of literature, including poetry, prose, and monologue, spoken every day on a porch for an entire year. Porchlit started on the porch of a historic home in Seattle and has expanded to Richard Hugo House, On the Boards, the steps of City Hall and now Seattle Center Poetry Garden. By inviting others to perform readings from historic and meaningful places, they hope to bridge history, community and literature – old and new.

Image: Poetry Garden, 2007. Glacial Red Granite by artist John Hoge